29 March 2023

Twice a year, Gert Renkema, Head of Financial and Economic Affairs at FGGA takes the time to have a chat with us about the financial wheeling and dealing at FGGA. This time, Gert talked about the results of the past year and the financial prognosis for this year.

‘An important message to our employees is that we’ve been able to show stable and healthy results and that the negative results of the faculty are a thing of the past.’

The results of 2022

‘Every year in March, we create an overview of the financial results of the past year. This includes the overall results of the faculty, but also the results per institute and centre. We also report on additional funding such as the quality agreement funds, sector funds, starter grants, and incentive funds. On 7 March, we discussed the explanatory notes on the annual report and accounts with the Faculty Board and, on the same day, we also handed in the documents to the Executive Board.

As a faculty, we have a combined positive result of 295,000 Euros on a total turnover of 37,6 million Euros. This positive result is somewhat distorted because it also includes funds that’ve been earmarked for specific projects. Such as, for instance, the quality agreement funds and the research stimulation funds for which we’ve already received the money, but not spent the entire sum during the year in which we’ve received it. The remaining funds will be transferred to the budget for upcoming years. If you leave those out, the result is exactly 0. Which is an excellent result for a growing organisation such as FGGA. Some negative budgets and results still show up on individual levels, such as, for instance, ISGA and CPL because of investments we’ve been making. An important message to our employees is that we’ve been able to show stable and healthy results and that the negative results of the faculty as a whole are a thing of the past.’

Tightened regulations public and private funding

‘What’s different this year, is that we also must report on public and private funding due to the tightened regulations. Public funding includes all our legal tasks such as education and research. Private funding might be in competition with commercial organisations. Think of secondments, research projects that compete with commercial research parties, and room rentals. This doesn’t have any consequences for our activities, it’s simply that the accountability requirements have tightened.’

Initial prognosis on 2023

‘In May, we’ll have to hand in our initial prognosis for 2023. As things stand, we expect our turnover to continue to grow. The number of FTEs will also continue to increase in 2023, by approximately 40 to more than 350 FTE in total. What’s also good to mention is that the number of permanent contracts among our staff is increasing rapidly. Last year, 32% of our staff didn’t have a permanent contract, now that is only 14%.’

Finally back to full strength

‘Within my department (FEZ) we had several outstanding vacancies. I’m happy to report that we are finally back to full strength. Marcel van Loon has recently started as our new project controller. A month ago, Marc Reumerman started work as financial controller at FGGA. Marc is working in a new capacity and will mostly be working on improving reports, monitoring the ECs and diplomas that’ve been obtained and creating process descriptions and operating instructions. All important steps towards the continued professionalisation of the organisation and our faculty. Starting May, we’ll be joined by Linda Termaten, our new advisor planning and control, and we’ll finally be back to full strength.’